ays. While all other buildings sacred and
secular sank in the flames, only the temple of Mefitis outside the
walls was left standing, saved either by its position or the power of
the presiding deity.[91]

Such was the end of Cremona two hundred and eighty-six years after 34
its foundation. It had been originally built in the consulship of
Tiberius Sempronius and Publius Cornelius, while Hannibal was
threatening to invade Italy, to serve as a bulwark against the Gauls
beyond the Po,[92] and to resist any other power that might break in
over the Alps. And so it grew and flourished, aided by its large
number of settlers, its conveniently situated rivers,[93] the
fertility of its territory, and its connexion through alliance and
intermarriage with other communities. Foreign invasions had left it
untouched only to become the victim of civil war. Antonius, ashamed of
his crime, and realizing his growing disfavour, proclaimed that no
citizen of Cremona was to be kept as a prisoner of war; and, indeed,
the unanimous feeling in Italy against buying such slaves had already
frustrated the soldiers' hope of profit. So they began to kill their
captives, whose relatives and friends, when this became known,
covertly bought their release. After a while, the rest of the
inhabitants returned, and the squares and temples were rebuilt by the
munificence of the burghers and under Vespasian's direct patronage.

However, the soil was so foully infected by the reek of blood that 35
it was impossible for the Flavians to encamp for long on the ruins of
this buried city. They advanced along the road to the third milestone,
and mustered the Vitellians, still straggling and panic-stricken, each
under his own standard. The defeated legions were then distributed
through Illyricum, for the civil war was still in progress and their
fidelity could not be relied on. They then dispatched couriers to
carry the news to Britain and the Spanish provinces. To Gaul they sent
an officer named Julius Calenus, to Germany Alpinius Montanus, who had
commanded an auxiliary cohort. Montanus was a Treviran and Calenus an
Aeduan; both had fought for Vitellius and thus served to advertise
Vespasian's victory. At the same time garrisons were sent to hold the
passes of the Alps, for fear that Germany might rise in support of
Vitellius.

FOOTNOTES:

[59] See ii. 21.

[60] i.e. the band of Otho's old Guards whom Vitellius had
disbanded an